We asked for 64bit FCP and thats what we got a ram hungry app! guess we would all be complaining if FCPX didn't use all the Ram we threw at it!

Memory handling is defiantly seems to be an issue either for FCPX and/or Lion in General.

I have 24GB of Ram and after an hour of editing even all of that gets used up. it doesn't always cause a problem for me but when it does FCP becomes very sluggish and can crash.

I tend to quit FCPX wait a few seconds and open it again when it feels sluggish.

i tend to make sure Safari isn't running in the background

I also only have the Events and Projects I'm currently working with available to FCPX and hide the rest to save on Ram. and do an occasional restart.

For general system performance i tend to keep a lot of free space system disk- keeping Media and Projects separate Raid drives. Delete FCPX preferences when appropriate and do a safeboot when things slow down (maybe once a week) this tends to work for me.

I also work often with a Macbook Air with just a paltry 4GB of ram, (editing proxy or full res off either a Promise or Lacie Thunderbolt Raid) which runs ok for general editing (of course the MBA is a poor performer for rendering/export and anything GPU related- it's not recommended for FCP) that 4GB of Ram goes almost instantly but i can still edit and do my work.

Hopefully the memory handling will become much better- keeping enough Ram available for smooth use of the application whilst still using all that maxing-out ram that we buy- and not bringing our systems to their knees by using up all the ram completely.

I find that hiding my project and events in temporary folders and keeping my project duration to 20 mins or less works wonders. FCP X is now very stable on my system.

When I have long projects, I break them into 20 min or shorter sections and when all is done, create a 'master' project and paste the component parts into it for final tweaking and export. This (and hiding projects and events) has made a huge improvement to my workflow.

From my limited understanding Snow Leopard's Ram usage/handling for for apps like FCPX does seem much more robust.

I do like Lion but i am considering taking my MacPro back to SnowLeopard on my next install to double check if FCPX runs smoother in reality.

but it will be 'swings and roundabouts' though e.g. Lion seems to have better graphics drivers for some RT playback tasks.

Your system not using all the Ram is not necessarily anything to worry about. Your FCPX should take the Ram it needs. Depending how many Events and Projects you have Open (i.e. not hidden) it might not need all your 10GB. As you run bigger projects you should see the Ram usage go up in a sensible way.

My usage of FCPX under Lion seems to point to the fact that takes more Ram than it needs causing instability (not a good thing). but i have read of users of FCPX under Lion who don't have this issue.

So if your happy with your current performance and stability id stick where you are.

Maybe it is as Apple had intended, they said 4 GB Ram was enough, for my machine at least. So I stay were I am. I always keep one project available. And I guess that the fact, that I make short projects plays a role. I find FCP runs smoothly and it never crashes just a little slow rendering but I can live with that. But that is the only issue. My Mac Pro 1,1 was the first intel Mac Pro so I guess it is solid machine.

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